Monday, July 3, 2017

Sweet Water

Laurie (L.C.) Lewis will always be a Marylander at heart—a
weather-whining lover of crabs, American history, and the sea. She admits to
being craft-challenged, particularly lethal with a glue gun, and a devotee of
sappy movies.

Her ninth published novel, her first romance novella, Sweet
Water, was inspired by a visit to Oregon’s magnificent coastline, and time
spent with Mother Eugenie, upon whom the character Mother Thomasine is based.

Laurie’s women’s fiction novels include The Dragons of Alsace Farm (2016),
Awakening Avery (2010), and Unspoken (2004), written as Laurie Lewis. Using the
pen name L.C. Lewis, she wrote the five volumes of her award-winning FREE MEN
and DREAMERS historical fiction series, set against the backdrop of the War of
1812: Dark Sky at Dawn (2007), Twilight’s Last Gleaming (2008), Dawn’s Early
Light (2009), Oh, Say Can You See? (2010), and In God is Our Trust, (2011).

She is currently completing a political suspense novel planned for a summer
2017 release, a re -release of a romantic comedy, and she’s working on another
historical fiction novel for a 2018 release. She loves to hear from readers.

Love and money don’t mix when three college friends launch
a fledgling business, and two impulsively elope. When Hudson Bauer hears the
wedding news he leaves town, stealing the company's first big contract and
Olivia and Jeff's dreams.

Olivia McAllister has spent eight years blaming Hudson for all her losses,
including her anemic marriage to Jeff and a recent, tragic accident that leaves
her body battered and her dreams of a family shattered.

Widowed, and in desperate straits, she is forced to accept Hudson’s offer to
recuperate at his parents’ empty house on Oregon’s Cannon Beach, but her return
to the place where the three friends once summered casts new light on her hasty
marriage and on the enemy she once called friend.

When Hudson offers Olivia a job doing humanitarian work, something hopeful and
familiar awakens in Olivia, giving rise to long-denied feelings for Hudson. Stuck
between grief and the promise of new love, Olivia must make peace with her
confusing past, and forgive the man she once hated, before Hudson walks away
again, closing the door on their possibilities forever.

Hudson untied the bedroll and several items fell onto
the sand. Another good snap, and the blanket spread across the cave’s entrance.
Hudson lowered her gently to the soft fabric.

Relief filled her, and she leaned back and nestled
into the soft sand. Her sigh brought the hint of a smile to Hudson’s beard-framed
lips. It was short-lived. His face slackened as his dark, penetrating eyes
fixed on her. His breathing seemed to stop, as did hers. Heat rose deep within
her torso, spreading like fire through her face and neck from the intensity of
his stare. A sheen of sweat broke out on her skin, and yet she shivered. She
touched her face, expecting to feel the fire radiating there, but the motion
seemed to break the moment. Without a word, Hudson took her empty water bottle and
left, leaving her shaky and confused.

As he departed, she shifted to watch him pick his way through
the primitive beauty of the area, around scrub brush, through the teeming tidal
pools, to a glorious waterfall spilling from the rock wall.

Robinson Crusoe-esque with his rumpled clothes, his beard,
and wild mop of tangled hair, Olivia was unable to tear her eyes from him. Gone
was the shyness and gangly motions of his youth. The business titan who could
buy or sell his own barrier reef or string of creature-filled islands now moved
with confidence and care, as protective of a single mollusk or anemone as he
had been as a beachcombing science student a decade ago. She wondered what made
him that way. Clearly, the young man who had been everything to her back then
was an even more splendid person now.

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